Chronic pain
- Article
- 2021-03-07
While acute pain is a normal feeling triggered in the nervous system to alert you to potential injury and the need to take care of yourself, chronic pain is different. Chronic pain persists. Pain signals keep firing into the nervous system for weeks, months, or even years. There may have been an accident initially - spine, serious infection, or there may be an ongoing cause of pain - arthritis, cancer, ear infection, but some people suffer from chronic pain in the absence of previous injuries or signs of physical injury. damage. Many chronic pain conditions affect older adults. Common chronic pain symptoms are headache, lower back pain, cancer pain, arthritis pain, neurogenic pain (pain due to damage to the peripheral nerves or the central nervous system itself), psychogenic pain (pain that is not the result of a previous illness or injury or any visible sign of damage inside or outside the nervous system). A person can have two or more coexisting chronic pain conditions. Such conditions may include chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, inflammatory bowel disease, interstitial cystitis, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, and vulvodynia. It is not known whether these conditions have a common cause.
Therapy
Medicines, acupuncture, local electrical stimulation and brain stimulation, as well as surgery, are some treatments for chronic pain. Some doctors use placebos, which in some cases has resulted in a reduction or elimination of pain. Psychotherapy, relaxation and medication therapies, biofeedback, and behavior modification can also be used to treat chronic pain.
Prognosis
Many people with chronic pain can be helped if they understand all the causes of pain and the many and varied steps that can be taken to reverse what has caused chronic pain. Scientists believe that advances in neuroscience will lead to more and better treatments for chronic pain in the coming years.
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